The Symbian Foundation is launching a new directory service as part of its Horizon developer program at the Symbian Exchange and Exposition. – LONDON — The Symbian Foundation is launching a new directory service as part of its Horizon developer program at the Symbian Exchange and Exposition here. The Horizon program consists of two parts,(…)

Asustek Computer unveiled its first supercomputer on Monday, the desktop computer-sized ESC 1000, which uses Nvidia graphics processors to attain speeds up to 1.1 teraflops. One teraflop is 1 trillion flops (floating point operations per second), a measure of computing speed. Computers able to perform at such high speeds can be used in a variety(…)

Google launches Google Social Search from Google Labs Oct. 26. The experiment is designed to make search results more relevant by mining the rich Google profile information users provide. This includes all Gmail contacts and Gmail chat buddies, as well and people users are publicly connected to on social sites such as Twitter and FriendFeed.(…)

Microsoft has released a tool that lets netbook owners install Windows 7 on their machines using a USB flash drive, sidestepping the usual requirement of a DVD drive. The utility, Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, creates a bootable flash drive from a downloaded .iso file, or disk image, of Windows 7, and can be purchased(…)

Salesforce.com and Adobe Systems on Monday announced Flash Builder for Force.com, an IDE (integrated development environment) for building rich Internet applications deployable through browsers and on desktops. More: continued here

Some users trying to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 have seen their PCs crippled by an endless series of reboots, according to reports on Microsoft’s support forum. A Microsoft engineer writing on the same forum said the company was investigating users’ problems, but downplayed them as “isolated issues.” More: continued here

Microsoft Monday said it will provide patent- and license-free use rights to the format behind its Outlook Personal Folders (known as PST files), opening e-mail, calendar, contacts, and other information to a host of applications such as antimalware or cloud-based services. More: continued here

When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted publicly in September that the company did “screw up with Windows Mobile,” many experts were left wondering how the mobile operating system can be fixed with the arrival of version 7 next year — and beyond. More: continued here

The Universal Charging Solution will enable the creation of one-size-fits-all chargers that can be used on any future phone, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a branch of the United Nations. A standard for a universal phone charger was approved this week by the International… More: continued here

UPDATED: Former MySQL business adviser Florian Mueller and members of the EC believe that Oracle owning MySQL through its acquisition of Sun is a colossal conflict of interest, since Oracle would suddenly become the new owner of its biggest open-source competitor — one that has 6 million installations and is gaining thousands more each month.(…)

IBM will announce a range of additions to its already-burgeoning portfolio of BI (business intelligence) tools on Monday during its annual IOD (Information on Demand) conference in Las Vegas. New software for content analysis will help users mine unstructured data, such as a raft of customer e-mails, for insights, said Rob Ashe, general manager of(…)